U.S. Jews don't give 10% of their income as dictated by Jewish law, and the money that is donated doesn't even count as tzedakah.

This month, Americans will sift through the countless solicitations in our mail and e-mail in order to decide where to give donations before the end-of-year tax-deduction deadline. Americans are often said to be the most generous people in the world, based on the percentage of the national gross domestic product that goes toward charitable causes. That said, the average American only gives away between 2% and 4% of his or her income.

And how do American Jews measure up? In virtually every Jewish school, camp and youth movement, students make their own tzedakah boxes and collect change to support various organizations and causes. Jewish organizations encourage the celebration of births, bar and bat mitzvahs and weddings by making tribute gifts. The Talmud even identifies the laws of tzedakah as the essential material to teach a potential convert. So those of us who have grown up learning about the centrality of tzedakah may expect the rate of Jewish giving to be much higher than the national average.

Surprisingly, then, most estimates suggest that American Jews give away no higher a percentage of income than their fellow Americans. While there are no precise figures on Jewish giving, a 2004 report by Steven M. Cohen found that Jews with annual incomes of $50,000 to $100,000 give away an average of $577 a year to all causes and that those with annual incomes of $100,000 to $150,000 give away an average of $1,206 a year. In other words, Jews in these income categories give away, on average, no more than 1.2% of their annual earnings. A 2008 report found that donors to Jewish community federations who earn $500,000 or more a year give away a total of about 1.4% of their pre-tax income to all charitable causes. These results are consistent with the general reality in America that residents of more liberal areas, people who are wealthier and those unaffiliated with religious congregations tend to give away smaller percentages of their incomes.

The Shulchan Aruch, the 16th-century book that has become the most authoritative guide to Jewish law, sets out the basic guidelines for the amount that one should give in tzedakah:

If you can afford to do so, you should give according to the needs of the poor. And if you can?t afford this much, you should give up to one-fifth -this is the ideal fulfillment of the mitzvah. And one-tenth is the ordinary way. Anything less than this is associated with the evil eye.

While we often speak of tithing as a goal, Jewish law actually sets 10% as the minimum that one should give for tzedakah. The rabbis caution against contributing more than 20% of one?s income, lest an overly generous person give away so much that he or she becomes dependent on the tzedakah of others. This maximum is waived for extremely wealthy people and for deathbed bequests.

As a community, we fail to live up to this obligation in two ways. First, as described above, most of us do not give away 10% - let alone 20% - of our income. Second, most of the money we give away does not actually count as tzedakah!

Jewish law defines tzedakah as material support for the poor. Rabbis over the centuries have debated the precise parameters of tzedakah, but the arguments always hinge on whether the gift in question serves the needs of the poor. Gifts that do not address poverty are not tzedakah. While Jewish law also mandates that community members contribute to such needs as synagogues, city infrastructure and other communal institutions, such gifts do not count as part of one?s tzedakah donation.

Within the Jewish community, we have become sloppy about this distinction between tzedakah and other types of donations. Just this year, I have received appeals that use the language of tzedakah to ask me to support college student trips to Israel, large denominational organizations and individual synagogues. The popular designation of all donations as tzedakah may stem from the fact that the Internal Revenue Service awards tax deductions for gifts to any designated 501(c)3 organization.

But our failure to distinguish between tzedakah and other philanthropic gifts diverts money away from poverty-related causes. In the United States, the primary beneficiaries of charitable giving are religious institutions, universities and other educational organizations. A study by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University found that in 2005, less than one-third of individual giving focused on economically disadvantaged populations. A 2007 study by Gary Tobin and Aryeh Weinberg found that 28% of mega-gifts from Jewish donors support higher education, while only 8% of mega-gifts are for ?public/society benefit? or social services.

Of course, calculating how and where to give our tzedakah is no easy feat. For starters, the challenge to set aside 10% to 20% of our income is complicated by the question of whether and how to count tax money as tzedakah. In theory, we should count the fraction of our tax dollars that supports social services for the needy as part of our tzedakah. After all, Jewish law envisions tzedakah more as a communal levy than as a voluntary contribution. But determining what percentage of our tax dollars fights poverty is a difficult task, and any reasonable calculation would likely still leave most of us falling short of the levels of tzedakah that our tradition demands.

In the midst of a recession, the prospect of increasing our giving may feel daunting. But the difficult economic times make our gifts even more important, as an increasing number of people have fallen deeper into poverty at the same time as philanthropic donations have decreased. In fact, if the American Jewish community were to live up to our tzedakah obligations, we would be putting tens of billions of dollars to work ending poverty. Then, we could rightfully say that tzedakah is central to being a Jew.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs is rabbi-in-residence of Jewish Funds for Justice and the author of ?There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice Through Jewish Law & Tradition? (Jewish Lights Publishing).

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I give my tzdakah to to my favorite charity - The Salvation Army. They do a wonderful job with people no one else will help. Furthermore - I alway know the money will be spent in a wise and appropriate manner.

This story is from Tractate Kalah.
The Talmud says: HaShem guarantees that the person who gives ten percent of his profits to tzedaka will become wealthy. HaShem says you can test him if this deal works! You can ask many successful people who give tzedaka, and they will confirm that they were never diminished from giving their share of tzedaka.
This is the secret to becoming wealthy. Most people think they must be rich before giving big money, that is wrong. The more you will give, the more G-d will return to you.

Al Gad, Tzedaka comes of pre tax, Yes most jewish organization will give you a tax receipt, for your donation which you can write off. 2. Give your 10% if it means you only buy a generic ipod or drive a used car, these are not crimes against humanity to you. The money will come back to you. 3. You ask where does it end it never ends go with the attitude you are a multi millionaire, when u give. Next tiem u are at schul ask a rabbi what does the talmud say about tithing ? Its true emuna to give tzedaka when things are tight.4 Work harder, get a secoind job I work 13 hours aday and yes its tight sometimes, I have to fly my wife back and forth to Israel a couple of times a year pay for our expenses there while I work here and keep shabbos etc. Its hard Im telling u its easy but give and dont stop.

One of the reasons Jews don't give is because of the Federations. Many of their leadership are haughty, arrogant, elitist snobs who look down upon non wealthy Jews. On top of that they sometimes take donations and use them to feather their own nests by creating a top heavy fund raising bureacracy. Many Jews would rather donate directly to community charities or to their Synagogues.

It is offensive to blame the Jewish Joe-six pack for the lack of charity. It's the limousine liberals in NYC, who run 90% of the Jewish philanthropic $$ who have raped and devastated Jewish charity foundations.
The Madoff scandal, which was undoubtedly the largest financial scandal to hit US based Jewish Charities, brought to light the chummy, arms length financial transactions that enabled Madoff to run his Ponzi scheme for so long. Instead of deploying independent hard dollar compensated investment advisers to hand-pick $-managers, the so-called board of directors of most US Jewish charities by-passed protocol to give the assets to Madoff.
If US Jews don't trust their charity leadership to manage their charity dollars, then they will send their donations directly to whom they want to benefit, and not to a bloated charitable bureaucracy that "distributes" whom they see fit - whether their actual donors approve or not. This trend has been building for years, and will continue.

Most Americans, Jews included, are wary of giving;we found out that donors often fund expensive lifestyles of foundation managers. I'm not talking Madoff or Ponzis: the United Way, Red Cross, and other supposed 'charities' (not to mention the Girl Scouts/Boy Scouts etc) pay their managers a high percentage of total revenue. We are now leery of political or religious contributions--the many stories of corrupt politicians, priests/bishops/rabbis/ pastors/imams challenge us to ask what our money supports. Americans often give more directly to local shelters, food drives, and community-run groups whose work we can see and whose integrity is measurable. Large state and national organizations keep looking for moremoremore...when we have lesslessless. It's enough to drive a donor to open a no-interest savings account!

Seems like a lose lose situation. If we fund political parties, to you we have too much influence. If we don't, we'll be accused of being too stingy.
Could it be, that when we fund public broadcasting it's because we believe it's an important service? Maybe not all Jewish action is associated with crazy conspiracies to hide what you call Israeli crimes.
Maybe, we--even those of us who believe in a nation's right to self-defense--develop medicines to cure people, research physics to understand how the world works, defend the environment for the sake of a better world for our children, or write music to.. make music.. without a sinister motive? Maybe those who fund PBS, the Democratic party, and even AIPAC, are doing it to benefit our communities?
I realize that terms like AIPAC, Zionism, and Israel make some folks' mouths foam. It'd be interesting to see them apply the same standards to other causes. It's a fantasy though because their hate has nothing to do with logic.

The article strikes me as a bit obnoxious--while it is laudable and even "halakhik" to claim that 10% of one's salary should go to tzedakah, why was this article aimed at American jews? What about Israelis? Do Israelis give 10% or more of their salary? I get so many requests for Israeli charities that I lose track. How are these supported by the Israeli society?
And where does the tax structure of the US play into this judgmental piece? Is giving up to 50% of one's salary to government important? It does support low income people, after all. Should tzedakah be based on pre or post-tax dollars? 10% of pre-tax dollars very quickly becomes 25% of post-tax dollars. Then try sending your kids to Jewish Day School, support the school, support federation, support Israeli olim, support eastern Europe Jewish communities, oh yeah--join a synagogue. And wait a minute, my local Chabad house called looking for something. Where does it end?

This holiday season, my husband and I donated $5,000 to local charities and $5,000 to Jewish charities in Israel. That's quite a bit, even in this recession. So don't accuse us American Jews of being stingy. If it weren't for us, Israel in particular would be in much worse shape. Also, consider that fact that much of the investment in Israel came from Jewish-American sources. Stingy? Us?

I though the seventh days advantists pay 10% of their income to their church but I did not know Jews do the same. Donations from American Jews is comming up short for the following reasons:
Madoff - unemployment - stock market is bad - market is very expensive for some - many American Jews did not like Israeli attack on Gaza

I think this article falls too short of explaining the issues involved.
The 10% obligation we are supposed to give is only applicable to farmers who are indeed supposed to give 10% to the poor.
The obligation to give 10% on money income is not even rabbinical rather its roots lye in custom (minhag). This can be given to communal needs.
It is not to be confused with tzedaka - charity. The legal obligation for Tzedaka is minimal after dedcuting 10% from all other donations. That means if you earn $100,000 after tax you would be obligated to give $10,001. With that one dollar at the endbeing Tzedoko - charity.

Jewish people and organizations support over 50% of the democratic party coffers and candidates - and hence the disproportionate influence on party and congressional votes. Jewish people are also responsible for well over 25% of donations to arts and public media channels. hence the silence on human rights violations by Israel. Do these donations count towards tzedakah?
OTOH, let's face, it the majority of jewish identified americans do not consider themselves religious and care little for shulchan aruch. Not that it would be a bad thing to shift donations from politics and influence peddling to supporting the poor - hopefully in America, where we have an increasing poverty pockets thanks to selfish and greedy corporatocratic policies. Now it's true that the vast majority of the poor in america are not jewish. and those who are are so by choice (too much yeshiva, too many children, not enough work). So if new tzedakah should goto harlem, detroit etc where unemployment is highest.

Gee I wonder why we aren't giving anymore. Either many of us have lost all of our money thanks to the stockmarket and Madoff or we no longer trust these Jewish chartable organizations. Many of us now believe our charity money is going to Bernie Madoff types. It will take many years to regain the trust of these Jewish charitable organizations.

There is no difference between North American Jews, North Pole Jews or Israelis; most Jews don't give because they have no religious upbringing, no Torah values in their lives, and most of all no true sense of God in their lives.
If anyone wants to see true tzedoka, they should visit any orthodox community or hasidic community. Just look at Hatzolah alone and you will see millions of dollars in tzedoka monies, or the countless organizations that operate because the religious communities give tzedoka with heart and passion as the Torah teaches them.

according to Maimonides, is teaching someone a trade so that they can lift themselves out of poverty for good. He also taught that it is better for both the giver and recipient to remain unknown to one another. I would argue, based on this, that donations to educational institutions, especially those that fund scholarship programs, most definately do count as Tzedakah.

I agree, whole hearly with the argument. My meiser counting starts at Pesach and so far this year. I proudly say that I have given away 13% of my income to Tzedaka (properly). But you left out the more stated reasons for giving Tzedaka. I know a lot of American Jews Orthodox to reform that dont give there 10%, well your business may be failing bedasue you failed to do the right thing with your money. I have had a hard year too, but I keep my head up and trust hashem that my business will improve and I will become waelthy from giving Tzedaka.
I ave to argue with the Rabbi on a halcha point. Yes, giving to an orthodox schul that supports out reach to jews and provides a bet midrash (house of study for jews) Is Tzedaka. Now making a commitment to a building prject fro a reform schul i would not consider as Tzedaka. But if a Schul is run for non profit as well as does a sepcialty in outreach as well as does privide money to the poor. It is Tzedaka.
Keep giving until it hurts.